RECORD EDITORIAL: King’s Grant PUD adds sparkle, not substance

Saturday

Oct 13, 2018 at 2:07 PMOct 13, 2018 at 10:51 PM

Kings Grant heads back to the County Commission Tuesday with a new deal it hopes will sway the county in its favor. The latest version of the Planned Unit Development sweetens the pot turned down by both the county Planning and Zoning Board and County Commissioners last time around. The developer and county have been tied up in litigation since 2015.

The developer bought the land as Open Rural. It seeks a PUD because all zoning and development cards go off the table and a new hand is cut from a fresh deck of land use cards.

King’s Grant seeks to put 200 hotel rooms, 999 homes, 130,000 square feet of commercial, retail and services units, 80,000 square feet of professional and medical buildings, a 120-bed rehab center and a 260-bed assisted living facility on the property. The parcel is 772 acres, but it’s important to note that 318 of that total are wetlands or upland preservation and not buildable.

The PUD’s numbers place total population at 2,486 people, or 2.44 people per unit. It notes that some part of the development will be age-restricted, we imagine to a more senior clientele. It says it will add only 259 students in area classrooms — that’s .28 school-age kids in each home.

The new deal includes an entrance roadway, construction of a county fire station and operation funding prior for what appears to be three years, $100,000 for economic development along S.R. 206 and some recreational facilities.

County paperwork puts the value of the fire station and operation clause at $6-plus million.

Will that be reason enough for the county to OK the PUD? The original PZA denial was on a 4-3 vote. The Commission’s vote to deny was a 3-2 majority. Razor-thin comes to mind.

Is this a concession or a bribe? We’ll leave that to your perception.

But, if the original PUD was wrong, the new one is as well. Nothing in the new deal erases the problems and inadequacies of the earlier PUD or the findings of fact that the proposed PUD:

• Is consistent with the Comp plan.

• Is inconsistent with Future Land Use Designation of Mixed Use and Residential-B.

• Is inconsistent with county Land Development standards for a PUD.

• Adversely affects the orderly development of the county.

• Denial of the PUD serves a legitimate public purpose in not overburdening existing public service facilities; halting detrimental or incompatible effects on surrounding areas; and prevents proliferation of urban sprawl.

• The development fails to promote orderly and efficient provision of public service infrastructure, facilities and services.

Kings Grant failed these tests then, and the new PUD proposal remains insufficient in these areas now.

The paperwork is a maze of legalese on both sides. And that can blur the central issue with the Kings Grant/St. Johns County litigation.

We’ve said it before. In an earlier editorial, concluding:

“This case is important. If the developers prevail, it’s open season, with a gun-shy county reluctant to pull the trigger again in denying excessive expectations by developers. If the county prevails, it sends a clear — and correct — message it is not the duty of the county to maximize developer profit. It’s to maximize a quality of life and safety for those who elected them. ... For two decades, our county has conformed to development. Isn’t it time for the opposite to be true?”

And this issue has the potential to get vastly stickier.

Should County Commissioners demur to Kings Grant demands Tuesday, it will ostensibly be to avoid more costly litigation — take the deal and end it here.

If that happens, St. Johns County will immediately get dragged into a new lawsuit — this one filed against it by the South Anastasia Communities Association. Its membership has already determined it will challenge a rollover on the Kings Grant PUD in court. An environmental attorney is locked in, to handle the lawsuit.

So we’ll have St. Johns County in court with its own residents and, in effect, the County Commissioners standing against many of the very people who put them in office.

From where we sit, on that rocky road waits a Tar Baby no one involved should want to punch.

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